Harvard scholar to present on Tocqueville

Posted March 20, 2008; 10:05 a.m.

by Staff

Harvey Mansfield, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, will present a three-part lecture series on "Tocqueville's New Liberalism" at 4:30 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, March 24-26, in 1 Robertson Hall.

His topics for each day will be:

March 24 -- "America's First Cause."

March 25 -- "Forms of Greatness in Democracy."

March 26 -- "The Mild Despotism of Rational Control."

Mansfield's research and teaching focus on political philosophy. He has written on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties, on Machiavelli and the invention of indirect government, in defense of a defensible liberalism, and in favor of a constitutional American political science. He also has written on the discovery and development of the theory of executive power, and is a translator of Machiavelli and Tocqueville.

In 2004, Mansfield received the National Humanities Medal from President Bush and, in 2007, he delivered the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual and public achievement in the humanities.

His presentations are part of the James Madison Program's Annual Charles E. Test M.D. Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture Series.